Shifting Role of the US Foreign Policy in Central Asia: Greater Central Asia Partnership Doctrine

Selbi Hanova 1 Social Research Center, American University of Central Asia Shifting Role of the US foreign policy in Central Asia: Greater Central Asia Partnership Doctrine By SELBI HANOVA 1 (Senior Student, American Studies Department, AUCA) Introduction The collapse of the Soviet Union brought internal political, economic and social crisis in the states of Central Asia. The state boundaries within the former USSR overnight became International borders. Previously operating system of center-periphery relationships between Moscow and other republics where the principle of the prevailing Soviet systematic interdependence appeared inadequate to maintain the economic relationships between the newly independent sovereign states. Moreover, the absence of a readily available alternative political and economic frame, which might have filled the power vacuum and fostered Central Asia’s regional cooperation hampered with the fragile economic and political order at the national and regional levels. However, despite the unfulfilled vacuum of regional economic interdependence , attempts to foster Central Asia’s regional cooperation through the offices of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and Central Asian Common Market since the early 1990s without a regional economic order did not succeed. The immediate US foreign policy towards the region was unclear, since the fall of USSR came unexpectedly. Accustomed to perceive entire USSR as a single unit, many 1 Note: The author is grateful to Dr. Aftab Kazi for his invaluable assistance and guidance in completing this work as well as providing with extensive literature on the subject of American foreign policy. Dr. Mary Bernadette Conde’s encouragement and her advice on numerous technical matters are greatly appreciated as well. The author also wishes to express her special appreciation to Dr. S. Frederick Starr for graciously agreeing to review the work and providing comments as well as for his work “A ‘Greater Central Asia Partnership’ for Afghanistan and Its Neighbors,” on which the present paper is based on. Selbi Hanova 2 American foreign policy analysts found it difficult to understand the political and economic independence of newly independent post Soviet Central Asian states, while other continued to perceive Central Asian states as the old Soviet Union, just as the Central Asian leadership itself was trying to understand the new geopolitical realities and find its role in the International Community. Initially the U.S. Department of State did not seem to have a formulated policy towards the region, as indicated by the policy initiatives of early 1990s outlined under the Silk Road Act I passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which did not clarify various policy aspects relevant to the regional political culture and only called for a fast overnight like economic and political transformation of post-Soviet Central Asian states. Moreover, U.S. also engaged Central Asia into the Partnership for Peace Program, a NATO initiative created in 1994. However, the romanticism about the revival of ancient Silk Routes as a policy initiative to possibly incorporate Asia and Europe without the necessary foreign direct investments in the region seems to have misled the U.S. foreign policy community during this early phase. Energy oriented investments in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan appeared a different matter beyond the scope of the Silk Road Act I policies. The early phase of U.S. policy in Central Asia involved smaller grants in various areas, besides some assistance the training of customs and border patrol troops, as well as limited assistance for economic and political transitions. The September 11 th , 2001, besides the war on terrorism and subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan became a turning point in changing the U.S. foreign policy course in the region bringing out additional realities and leading United States to lease two major military bases, one in Karshi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan and another at the Manas Airport of Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Longevity of the Afghan conflict and some newly emerging geopolitical alliances within the region, such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Selbi Hanova 3 however, appear to have started new the policy debate both in the United States as well as the Central Asian governments. However, publication of the article on “A Partnership for Central Asia” in Foreign Affairs in July 2005 by Professor S. Frederick Starr, Chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute about the Greater Central Asia Partnership (GCAP) doctrine, followed by the re- organization of the U.S. Department of State, merging Central and South Asia to create the new Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs into a single operational entity reflects a new vision on possible Central and South Asian cooperation under the new GCAP doctrine. Dr. Starr’s efforts were further complimented by the organization of a high-level International Conference in Kabul, Afghanistan (April 1-2, 2006), which discussed prospects and problems of trade and development within the GCAP doctrine that includes Afghanistan. Thus, the GCAP doctrine has played an important role in shifting the U.S. Central Asia foreign policy aimed at providing the landlocked Central Asian states an access to the Arabian sea ports of Pakistan, hence alternative routes of transportation to facilitate regional and cross-continental trade in order to incorporate Central Asia into the world economy. The promotion of regional integration of Central Asian states under the GCAP scheme indicates a major change in U.S. foreign policy towards this region aimed at replacing the military presence with long-term economic links within and outside the proposed region. Research Questions Considering the major thesis of this study that the alternative routes of transportation for Central Asia through its traditional southern historical land and sea routes in South Asia indicates the beginnings of a new regional economic order under the Selbi Hanova 4 GCAP doctrine, new American foreign policy initiative in the region, this study attempts to explore and analyze the following three research questions: 1. What is Greater Central Asia Partnership (GCAP)? 2. How does the GCAP scheme differ from the perceptual policy base of major power players, such as United States, Russia and China? 3. What is geopolinomics inherent to GCAP and how do the Central Asian states view it? Present study consists of three chapters. First chapter discusses historical context of Greater Central Asia Partnership, briefly looking at the history of the region in the twentieth century and the development of US-Central Asia relations prior to the introduction of GCAP. Second chapter looks at the concept of GCAP in depth, a point of the major shift of the US foreign policy toward the region. This chapter analyzes how geopolinomics is inherent to the concept of GCAP, thus answering the third question. Finally, third chapter looks at the interplay of GCAP with other regional powers, such as Russia, China, Iran and the EU. Analytical Framework The discipline of geography and its geopolitical impact on foreign policy that had allegedly lost its importance after the World War II appears to have regained its significance after the major international geopolitical changes of early 1990s. Geopolitics once again has become an important parameter in the foreign policies of most world powers, including the United States, albeit under some very different circumstances of the late 20 th and early 21 st centuries. However, as Demko and Wood point out, “the magnitude and extent of global economic change renders the old field of geopolitics obsolete” 2. Indeed, new economic realities of the globalizing world require broader outlook upon the 2 George J. Demko and William B. Wood, Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the Twenty- First Century (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999) 14. Selbi Hanova 5 range of interactions that take place, particularly in Central Asia. The complexity of economic relations and its interconnectedness with foreign policies of the states cannot be easily described by traditional theories of political realism, thus the old frames of geopolitics alone, as geoeconomics appears to have an equally important partnership role. The concept of geopolinomics introduced by George Demko and William Wood “is perhaps a more appropriate term for analysis of spatial, political, and economic systems among states and their region” 3 in the 21 st century. Geopolinomics focuses upon the “interactions between and among governments and how foreign policies are influenced by regional and global economic prowess, and in turn, how economic linkages and flows are affected by political relations.” 4 The substance of many economic and political realities in the former Soviet Union seems to have changed to the extent that previous analytical frameworks derived from the post-independence economic and political transitions and experiences of Asian, African and Latin American states appear inadequate to explain the existing levels of political cultures and the psychology of landlocked states, as well as the emerging political attitudes in post-Soviet Central Asia. The story of Caucasus and Baltic states is qualitatively different in spatial terms. Traditional frameworks cannot explain the origins of nationalism without ethnic routes 5 or politics of environment, water, space and technological issues in spatial terms. Moreover, neither political science or political geography alone nor

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